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Grammatical constraints on child bilingual code mixing

This study examined structural constraints on early child code mixing. Constraints are widely attested in adult bilinguals (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980). It has been argued that these constraints preserve the structural properties of both languages. It is uncertain whether constraints on early child code mixing are the same as constraints on adult code mixing. The present analysis was based on Poplack's two structural constraints: the free morpheme and the equivalence constraints. Ten French-English bilingual subjects were observed at 4 time periods, between approximately 2;00 and 3;06 years of age. The children's utterances containing elements from both languages were analysed for violations of Poplack's constraints. The violation rate was extremely low, less than 2% of the total mixed utterances. These results corroborate Lanza (1997), Vihman (1998), Allen et al. (2000), and Paradis et al. (2000), who likewise found that structural constraints on code mixing are operational from early in acquisition.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33314
Date January 2000
CreatorsSauvé, Deanne.
ContributorsGenesee, Fred (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Department of Psychology.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001781756, proquestno: MQ70622, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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